Chapter Four

The world outside was waking up, but inside the room, everything still felt suspended, like time had decided to slow down and sit still for a while.

Celeste hadn’t moved.

She lay exactly where they had left her, blankets pulled up around her, dark hair spread across the pillow in a way that still didn’t feel right no matter how many times anyone looked at it. Her breathing was steady, which was something, but it was shallow enough to keep everyone on edge without really knowing why.

Silas hadn’t gone far.

He’d stayed near the bed all night, and even now he was standing close enough that if she so much as shifted, he’d notice immediately. He looked more awake than he should have, considering he’d barely slept, but whatever rest he’d managed clearly hadn’t done much. His attention hadn’t left her, not even for a second.

The medic moved around the room quietly, setting things down, adjusting others, checking Celeste again even though she already knew what she’d find. It wasn’t frantic or rushed, just careful. More careful than before.

Lysandra stepped closer to the bed, her movements calm, controlled in a way that didn’t feel forced but intentional. She looked down at Celeste, her expression softening just slightly, though the concern never left.

“She hasn’t moved?” she asked.

Silas shook his head. “Not since earlier.”

Lysandra glanced at him briefly, then back to Celeste. “What happened?”

The medic answered this time. “She wasn’t aware,” she said. “Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t focused. It didn’t feel like she was fully awake.”

Cedric stood near the window, arms loosely crossed, though his attention was completely inside the room. “Sleepwalking?” he asked.

The medic hesitated. “Maybe,” she said. “But I don’t like assuming that.”

Calix leaned against the wall near the door, arms crossed tightly now. “Then what are we dealing with?” he asked.

The medic didn’t answer right away. “Something tied to what happened in the well,” she said finally. “And possibly the moonstone. Or both.”

Silas exhaled slowly, his gaze still fixed on Celeste. “That doesn’t narrow anything down.”

“No,” the medic said. “It doesn’t.”

Victoria stepped into the room then, quieter than usual, her eyes immediately landing on Celeste before flicking around to everyone else. “Anything new?” she asked.

“No,” Lysandra said gently.

Victoria nodded, stepping closer to the foot of the bed, her arms folding loosely. She studied Celeste for a moment, then frowned slightly. “She looks the same,” she said.

Silas’s voice came low, steady. “She isn’t.”

Lysandra reached out, brushing her fingers lightly through Celeste’s hair. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t flinch at the change in color, even if it was still unfamiliar.

“She’ll come back,” she said quietly.

Cedric glanced at her. “We don’t know that yet.”

Lysandra didn’t look at him. “I do.”

There wasn’t anything sharp in her tone, just certainty.

Cedric didn’t push it.

Instead, he looked back at Celeste, his expression tightening slightly. “The Moonwell reacted,” he said after a moment. “And when it reacts like that… it doesn’t always mean healing.”

The medic nodded. “We saw that much.”

“It can change things,” Cedric continued. “Not just physically.”

Silas’s attention shifted slightly, just enough to acknowledge the words. “Change what?”

Cedric’s gaze met his. “That depends on what it was reacting to.”

That didn’t help.

If anything, it made things worse.

Victoria shifted her weight. “So we’re just supposed to wait and see what that means?”

“For now,” the medic said. “Yes.”

Calix let out a breath through his nose, clearly not a fan of that answer, but he didn’t argue.

Because there wasn’t really another option.

The room settled again after that, the conversation fading as everyone fell into watching, waiting, thinking.

Time passed.

It wasn’t obvious at first, but the light in the room shifted slowly, the pale morning brightness softening as the day moved forward. The herbs continued to give off that faint, calming scent, something steady in the middle of everything else.

Silas hadn’t moved much.

At some point, he sat down again, pulling the chair closer to the bed, his hand finding Celeste’s without thinking. His thumb brushed lightly against her skin every so often, more out of habit than intention.

“She used to hate sitting still,” he said after a while, his voice quieter now.

Victoria glanced at him. “She still does,” she said.

That almost made him smile.

Almost.

“Yeah,” he said. “That sounds more like her.”

Lysandra watched him for a moment, then looked back at Celeste. “She’ll need time,” she said. “Even after she wakes.”

Silas’s brow furrowed slightly. “You think she won’t be the same?”

Lysandra didn’t answer right away. “I think we don’t know enough yet,” she said. “And until we do, we shouldn’t assume anything.”

Silas nodded faintly. “Then we take it as it comes.”

“That’s all we can do,” she said.

The door opened quietly not long after, and the medic stepped out briefly, likely to gather more supplies, leaving the rest of them in that same quiet space.

**

The door closed softly behind the medic, and the room settled again into that same quiet stillness, though it no longer felt as calm as it had earlier. There was something sitting beneath the surface, something none of them could quite name, but all of them could feel in one way or another. It didn’t press down on them, didn’t make it hard to breathe, but it lingered just enough to make the silence feel heavier than it should have been.

Silas didn’t move from where he sat beside the bed. His hand remained wrapped around Celeste’s, his thumb tracing slow, absent patterns against her skin as his gaze stayed fixed on her face. He wasn’t expecting her to suddenly wake, wasn’t waiting for some dramatic shift, but he also wasn’t willing to look away in case something small changed and he missed it.

Victoria shifted her weight at the foot of the bed, her arms still loosely crossed as she watched Celeste in a way that felt unfamiliar for her, quieter and more focused than usual. “She’s really just… staying like this?” she asked after a while, her voice low enough that it didn’t disturb the room but still broke the silence.

Silas nodded once without looking up. “She hasn’t done anything else.”

Victoria let out a slow breath, her gaze dropping briefly before returning to Celeste. “I don’t like it,” she said honestly.

“None of us do,” Calix replied from near the door, though his tone carried more edge than hers did.

Lysandra didn’t respond right away. She remained on the opposite side of the bed, her attention fixed on her daughter as her fingers lightly brushed along Celeste’s arm, a small, grounding motion that seemed to steady her more than anything else. “She’s still here,” she said quietly. “That hasn’t changed.”

Calix shifted slightly, clearly wanting to argue, but he stopped himself. There wasn’t anything useful he could say against that, not when it was the only thing holding any of this together.

Cedric stepped away from the window then, moving a little closer to the bed as his gaze settled on Celeste in a way that suggested he was trying to piece something together that wasn’t fully there yet. “We need to be ready for when she wakes,” he said, his voice calm but deliberate.

Silas finally glanced up at him. “We’ll handle it when it happens.”

Cedric held his gaze for a moment. “That’s not how we should handle it.”

Silas didn’t respond immediately, but there was something in the way his posture shifted that made it clear he wasn’t ignoring the point, just choosing not to engage with it right now. “She’s not even awake yet,” he said. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

“That’s exactly why we should be thinking about it,” Cedric replied.

Before that could turn into something more, Lysandra spoke, her tone calm but steady enough to settle the conversation before it went any further. “We’ll handle it together,” she said. “There’s no reason to decide anything before we understand what we’re dealing with.”

Silas leaned forward slightly, his attention returning fully to Celeste as his grip adjusted around her hand, just enough to keep contact without disturbing her. The faint warmth of her skin grounded him in a way nothing else could right now, something real to hold onto when everything else felt uncertain.

For a while, nothing changed.

Her breathing stayed steady.

Her body stayed still.

The herbs continued to release that soft, calming scent into the air, steady and consistent, something that should have made the room feel easier to sit in, but didn’t quite manage to push away the underlying tension that had settled there.

And then, slowly, almost too subtle to notice at first, that feeling returned.

Silas felt it before he saw anything.

It wasn’t sudden, wasn’t sharp, but it crept back in quietly, like a shift in pressure that didn’t belong. His hand stilled slightly against Celeste’s, his posture tightening just enough to show he’d noticed something before he even understood what it was.

He didn’t speak right away.

Instead, he watched her more closely, his gaze narrowing slightly as he tried to catch what had changed.

It was her breathing.

It hadn’t stopped.

It hadn’t become erratic.

But it wasn’t the same.

It was just slightly deeper now, a little less even than it had been before, like her body was adjusting to something on its own.

“Did you see that?” he asked quietly, his voice low but steady.

Lysandra’s attention snapped to Celeste immediately. “What?”

“Her breathing,” Silas said.

The shift in the room was immediate.

Victoria stepped forward slightly, her arms dropping as her focus sharpened. Calix straightened near the door, his tension becoming more visible as he pushed away from the wall. Cedric moved closer without hesitation, his attention fully locked on the bed now.

The door opened again.

The medic stepped back in.

She didn’t ask what was happening.

She saw it.

Her gaze moved to Celeste instantly, her posture tightening as she crossed the room quickly but without panic, her movements controlled as she stepped beside Silas.

“Tell me,” she said.

“Her breathing,” Silas replied. “It changed.”

The medic reached for Celeste’s wrist, her fingers pressing lightly as she checked her pulse, her focus sharp and precise. “It’s elevated,” she said after a second. “Not dangerously, but it’s reacting to something.”

“To what?” Victoria asked.

The medic didn’t answer, because she didn’t have one.

Celeste’s fingers twitched. It was small, but it was clear.

Silas tightened his hold slightly, leaning in closer. “Celeste,” he said, his voice quieter now, more focused.

Her hand shifted faintly in his.

Everyone stood still.

Her breathing deepened again, just slightly, then caught for a moment before evening out again.

It felt like something was trying to happen. Like something was pushing forward.

And then…It stopped.

Her body relaxed again. Her breathing returned to the same steady rhythm it had been in before. Her hand went still.

The medic exhaled slowly, her shoulders easing just slightly. “Its passed,” she said.

Silas frowned, his grip not loosening. “That wasn’t nothing.”

“No,” the medic agreed. “It wasn’t.”

Lysandra looked between them. “Then what was it?”

The medic hesitated for a moment before answering, her voice quieter now. “It felt like something trying to surface… and then pulling back.”

Silas’s jaw tightened slightly. “Something?”

“I don’t know if it’s her,” the medic said. “Or something affecting her.”

That answer didn’t help. If anything, it made everything feel worse. Because it meant they weren’t just waiting for her to wake up. They were waiting for something they didn’t understand.

The medic adjusted the herbs again, replacing a few and adding something slightly stronger, her movements more deliberate now. “This should help keep her system calm,” she said. “If something tries to trigger again, it may dull it enough to keep things stable.”

Silas nodded once. “Do it.”

She finished quickly, stepping back just enough to observe again, her attention still fixed on Celeste as if expecting something else to happen. For a while, nothing did. The room slowly settled again, though not completely. That underlying tension remained. Quieter now. But still there.

Victoria let out a slow breath. “So we’re just waiting for it to happen again?”

“Yes,” the medic said simply.

Calix ran a hand through his hair, frustration slipping through despite his effort to keep it contained. “There has to be something else we can do.”

“If there was, I would already be doing it,” the medic replied.

Silas didn’t say anything else.

He just stayed where he was, his hand still holding Celeste’s, his attention locked on her as if letting go for even a second wasn’t an option.